Sandra McGee was the mother of three daughters and was separated from her husband at the time of her disappearance.A landscaping contractor who was doing landscaping renovations at a Monterey, California, residence found the skeleton of a woman who has been missing since 1982.
Monterey police were called to the scene about 3:20 p.m. on Sept. 2. The remains were identified a week later by the Santa Cruz County Coroner’s Office, where they were transported for analysis, according to the Monterey County Weekly.
The remains were identified as Sandra McGee, who was 32 when she was last seen in Monterey, on Dec. 9, 1982, driving a borrowed red Pontiac Sunbird, according to the CharleyProject.org, which profiles cold-case information about missing persons.
McGee visited the Brickhouse Bar on the night she disappeared and on her way home picked up a hitchhiker named Alfred Powell. At her home, McGee’s brother and roommate saw the pair before they left again, with McGee saying that she was going to drop Powell off.
According to the newspaper’s report, the last person who saw McGee was a gas station attendant, who believed McGee and Powell were going to a Santa Cruz nightclub. She was supposed to meet a musician at the Bourbon Street Bar, but was never seen again.
The car that she had borrowed was reported stolen and in 1983 security guards at a hotel construction site in Monterey saw the car and police investigated. There was no blood in the car, but a cigarette butt was found and tested for DNA.
Powell was arrested in 1983 for the murder of another young woman and is serving life in prison at Solano State Prison. He is a suspect in the murder of one woman and the disappearance of another.
Police discovered that Powell once lived in the garage at the home where McGee’s remains were found last week. Investigators did a full excavation of the yard and found more evidence, but police declined to disclose that information.
Detectives also visited Powell in prison, but he refused to talk about McGee.
“They’re not always the easiest cases, but we’re going to do our best,” Monterey Police Lt. Jeff Jackson told the newspaper.
